Analysis of Plant Remains from the Bronze Age Site of Pecica Şanţul Mare

Summary

The site of Pecica Şanţul Mare, Romania is among the most important settlements of the European Bronze Age to understand the origins and control of metalwork networks that redistributed the metal resources of the western Carpathian Mountains throughout prehistoric Europe. The study of the ways vegetal resources were used by the inhabitants of Pecica will provide crucial information about the level of social, political, and economic complexity achieved during the Bronze Age. In particular archaeobotanical remains are examined to explore how Pecica acted as a center of food production and redistribution, how the people of Pecica shaped their environment, and why they may have abandoned the site after a period of rapid increase in social complexity. Initial findings indicate that cereals, especially einkorn wheat (Triticum monococcum) and barley (Hordeum vulgare), were grown as a principal food source throughout the Bronze Age. In addition, several species of weeds and wild plants have also been found across the site and there is a clear difference in taxon distribution between earlier and later phases of occupation.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• New Perspectives on the Romanian Bronze Age

Keywords

Spatial Coverage